Facebook Groups: the Perfect Fit for B2B Event Marketing
Facebook Groups: the Perfect Fit for B2B Event Marketing
30
AUGUST, 2018
Skeptical? Well, that’s not surprising!
“what if Facebook could do everything LinkedIn can do, but better?”
There are only two considerations when deciding which platform really has what it takes to give your event the competitive edge, namely where does your audience spend most of their time and how often do they spend it there?
It is predicted that the average social media user user will spend around 5 years 4 months online versus 1 year 3 months of face-to-face socialising during their lifetime. It is interesting to note that on a daily basis they will spend a minimum of 35 minutes on Facebook per day, while only spending 17 minutes per week on LinkedIn . Where would you rather be
What are the real reasons Facebook far outperforms LinkedIn? Higher Engagement, Insights and Analytics, Paid Advertising and Ease of Use.
Higher Engagement
When it comes to engagement, Facebook groups get a much higher engagement rate than LinkedIn groups. One of the main reason is due to the notifications function, but this is only one of the many ways to remain top-of-mind.
There are a host of opportunities for touchpoints to occur. It is said that, on average 6-8 touchpoints (or 7 – 13 touchpoints) are required before a sale, so it obviously pays to use as many as these opportunities available to educate and entertain as much as possible.
Touchpoints may include posts, videos (always go native), memes, lead magnets, polls and special offers or discounts.Building trust takes time.
Insights and Analytics
Facebook Groups has mad real-time possible to create built-in reports consisting of data based on the type of audience, country of origin, and other useful metrics as long as there are 250 members or more in the group. While this useful tool comes standard with any Facebook group or Page, LinkedIn Groups unfortunately does not provide the same extensive insights on group performance. You would have to invest in a potentially expensive 3rd party solution to get similar data analysis.
The Facebook insights you may expect include:
- Number of new members and the percentage increase or decrease
- Number of interactions and the percentage of increase or decrease
- Graphic representation of group growth over time
- Post engagement i.e.popular days and times that your members are online
- Age and gender composition
Polls and pre-approval surveys also allow a great deal of data to help you understand how you can serve your audience better and whether you are the right fit for them and whether they would be able to make a genuinely valuable contribution.
Paid Advertising
One the surface you would be tempted to think that it all boils down to cost per ad, but Facebook has a great deal more flexibility in this space. Facebook allows you to decide how much you’re willing to pay per day, and by extension, give you an idea of the size of your potential audience..
Facebook also allows for deciding on other variables which may influence the right client fit, which means that you can choose to filter by interests and location and a wide range of preferences, while LinkedIn only targets users according to job titles, industry, location and keyword matches.
Ease of use
Hands-down ease of use it the most important consideration when it comes to group administration. Membership request filtering, scheduled posts, group to group linking, file repository and removed member clean up all form part of this.
Membership request filtering
Once the group has been set up, you can filter your group requests for effective management. As your group grows, it can quickly become a time consuming process.
Each member profile is open to scrutiny and you can and filter their specifics by various qualifiers, including location and gender, to ensure they’re the right fit for your group before granting them access.
This is not only another time-saving measure, in that you can now filter through requests more efficiently, but it also acts as a spam filter, which helps you quickly and easily weed out the undesirables so that only the highest quality members are granted access.
Scheduled Posts
Facebook Groups allow for scheduled posts just like pages, which enables you to enhance your communications, and optimize posting times based on member activity. Group admins and moderators can create and and schedule posts for a specific day and time which will increase group engagement.
Group to group linking
When you like one Facebook Page, you get a listing of similar Pages. This feature has been made available to groups and is very similar to LinkedIn’s Group “Discover” feature. When you join a group, a group admin can recommend similar or related groups to their members. This is the perfect way to bring related communities and sub-communities closer together.
File repository
Another great feature of Facebook Groups is the ability to upload and create documents. Creating documents within the social network is similar to making a regular post. Members can download or preview them, or even upload their own.
Facebook and DropBox make for a really good team.When you share a Dropbox file, anyone with the link can access it, even if you delete the post.
Removed member clean-up
To keep your community safe from (or simply to avoid unnecessary drama) a group admins can person and the content they have created within the group. This includes posts, comments and other people added to the group – all in one easy step.
Conclusion
Worldwide, there are over 1.71 billion monthly active users who generate 4.5 billion likes daily. When compared to LinkedIn, Facebook is unrivaled because it is far superior in user experience, the amount of time a user is present on the platform and all the useful group administration features that one simply does not see on LinkedIn Groups.
Higher engagement, access to useful insights and analytics, lower cost paid advertising and ease of use make Facebook Groups the obvious choice for B2B Event Marketing .
Eric Louw
CLIENT SERVICES DIRECTOR
Some people are just destined to market B2B events. Eric is one of those people. It’s not because he’s passionate about B2B events (that’s a given), it’s because he’s passionate about helping B2B event organisers maximise their marketing budget with digital marketing tactics.
Eric Louw
CLIENT SERVICES DIRECTOR
Some people are just destined to market B2B events. Eric is one of those people. It’s not because he’s passionate about B2B events (that’s a given), it’s because he’s passionate about helping B2B event organisers maximise their marketing budget with digital marketing tactics.
